Nunavut elder builds traditional sod house, as researchers uncover others from the past

Laimiki Innuaraq has fond memories of living in a traditional Inuit sod house, or qammaq, from 1943 to 1963.

The sod house, with the aid of just a single qulliq (a traditional oil lamp), was enough to keep him warm even in the harshest of winters.

He still remembers the small details: the aroma of fresh bannock after a day on the land or the excited barking of his qimmiit (sled dogs).

Now, six decades later, he's recreated a similar dwelling from his past.

Innuaraq got permission from the hamlet to build one just a short snowmobile ride from Sanirajak, Nunavut. He completed it within weeks, using human power, plus a shovel, knife and axe. 

He said he got emotional as he put the final touches on the new sod house. 

"I sat down where I once used to sit, seeing the porch, where we used to dry up our gear … seeing our sleeping area along with the qulliq," he said in Inuktitut. "I started shedding tears."

"We did not have much as Inuit ... but at the time there was an abundance of wildlife. That is how we survived." 

Innuaraq said he built a sod house so that his wife, and others in the community, had a place to sew.

Unlike modern houses, "the sod dwelling is a great place to sew caribou hide, sealskin, polar bear skin … it does not make the fur skins dry up," he said.

History of sod houses 

Sod houses of the past relied largely on animal bones, like from bowhead whales, for the framework. 

Innuaraq said he found spare wood to build this new sod house, but he still used flat stones for the foundation, and caribou hides and soil for insulation – just as he did with his first dwelling.

He describes Sanirajak as a place abundant with beautiful red soil. 

"I was looking around the edge of the lake, 'wow,' it has amazing soil … when the building was completed it was beautiful," he said. 

Max Friesen is a professor of archaeology at the University of Toronto. He's been working on sod houses in the Arctic since 1986. 

He believes sod houses in Inuit Nunangat appeared around 800 years ago, though it probably goes back more than 2,000 years before that, with the Tuniit (also known as the Dorset culture), and possibly 10,000 years ago in places like Europe and Siberia. 

He said there's no specific period when people started to move away from sod houses in Inuit Nunangat. But the snow house eventually became a popular form of shelter. They are quicker to build, he said, and they are mostly built on sea ice, near the breathing holes of seals. 

"One of the things about sod houses is … it takes so much work and they're meant to be lived in basically all winter, which is a hugely long period of time in Nunavut," he said, referring to the traditional nomadic way of life. 

Uncovering old sod houses in the Kitikmeot region

Friesen has been working with Pitquhirnikkut Ilihautiniq (Kitikmeot Heritage Society) to excavate sod houses near Cambridge Bay for several decades – and collect elders' testimonies.

They plan to do more work in the Cambridge Bay, Nunavut area this coming summer. 

Emily Angulalik, the society's executive director, still remembers the sight of a large sod house they uncovered in 2004. Their research suggests it was inhabited by several Thule. 

"I'm in awe of how our Inuit have lived for thousands of years … it has given me this [sense of] resiliency," she said.

Working on those excavations helps the community – including the youth – feel pride in their culture, she said, and it helps elders recall some powerful memories. 

"When Dr. Friesen discovers the artifacts and presents them to our elders, then their stories come back…. It's like a video playing in your mind," she said. 

"The elders have been living around the area for so many years ... so it's very important to conduct our oral histories with our elders."

Preserving knowledge – while they can

But their work faces a growing threat – climate change. 

Rising sea levels, rising river levels, and longer open water periods can cause soil erosion. For sod houses farther inland, Friesen said, the threat is soil warming up. 

"In many regions, the permafrost, the permanently frozen soil, is now starting to thaw," he said. "So it means that the land is getting loose." 

Between 2013 and 2017, he was part of a group which excavated much bigger sod houses in the Inuvialuit region.

"We visited, maybe 30 or 40 different sites, and literally every one of them was being impacted to some degree by erosion. In a few cases, we knew a site had been there in the past, but it was completely gone," he said.

He believes there could be half a dozen sites near Cambridge Bay which are threatened by erosion, so there will have to be conversations about how to continue that work – while they can. 

"Do we want to, for example, excavate a few of these sites before they're gone, or do we want to just document them?"